Free Software makes play for online role playing games

 

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By Matt Whipp

Posted on 15 Dec 2006 at 16:54

MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, are big business. With businesses such as Reuters opening 'offices' in Second Life, and digital property changing hands for tens of thousands of dollars, there's money in them there virtual hills.

World of Warcraft, Second Life, Lineage - MORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, are big business. With businesses such as Reuters opening 'offices' in Second Life, and digital property changing hands for tens of thousands of dollars, there's money in them there virtual hills.

It also represents the next frontier for Free Software. By liberating the code underlying MMORPGs, players are no longer limited to the proprietary worlds and objects designed by the companies running the games. Anyone with the technical nous should be able to create their own objects, monsters and beings, or even their own worlds, based on open access to the underlying code.

One candidate for liberation is Ryzom, an MMORPG that was left spinning in its own orbit after the company behind it, Nevrax, went bankrupt.

Since then, Nevrax's former CEO Olivier Lejade banded together a group of ex-staff, enthusiastic players and Valentin Lacambre, a proponent of the 'alternative Internet movement', to start a campaign to buy out the game and release the source code under the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GPL).

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) recognised the potential in a GPL-ed MMORPG and donated £60,000 to the movement, which now claims to have amassed in excess of €200,000.

Peter T. Brown, Executive Director of the FSF, described the Free Ryzom campaign as 'a high priority project for the free software movement'.

A liberated Ryzom would open up the game's engine and client/server architecture to 'allow the development of a myriad of universes, each one evolving its own philosophy and unique content - but sharing in general technical improvements', claims the FSF.

Access to the game won't be free. And the GNU GPL allows a vendor to sell software licensed under it for any price it wants. It must abide by the other terms of the licence and make the code freely available, however.

The Free Ryzom campaign will establish a non-profit organization to run and maintain the current game servers, which will require funding for service costs and game development. This will be charged in the form of monthly fees, although one would expect this to be well below levels set by commercial operations.

One aspect that will have to be carefully managed though, is how to maintain a fiscal system in a virtual world where anyone can replicate value.

For more information on the campaign and to download the client software, visit the Ryzom.org site.